More Wikipedia copying from climate critics

George Mason University statistics professors Edward Wegman and Yasmin Said emerged as public figures in a 2006 Congressional investigation of climate scientists, as lead authors of an analysis that indicted climate science. However, following reports in the Deep Climate blog, USA TODAY last year confirmed with plagiarism experts that parts of the report appear cribbed from the same scientists they criticized, and from Wikipedia.

Wegman and his attorney, Milt Johns, have not replied to an e-mailed request for comment on the complaints about the WIRES CompStat article. Johns has previously denied any plagiarism by the researchers. Copying the article from Wikipedia apparently led to math errors in the text, Gelman reports, part of a series intended as an instructional summary for students and researchers on the use of statistics.

George Mason University, under fire for an 18-month investigation into acknowledged copying in the retracted study, did not reply to a request for comment on the latest news. However spokesman Dan Walsch, did answer by email about the university's policy on students plagiarizing from Wikipedia in their schoolwork:

"Mason does not have a university wide policy regarding the use of Wikipedia by students. While it is a general-use resource, generally, it is something we leave to the individual professors to teach students the difference between it and a more traditional, scientific reference source."

All told, at least five published papers by Wegman and Said appear to suffer from plagiarism-related defects, summarizes the analysis. "It's a dismal chronology," concludes the Deep Climate blogpost.

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